Inmate who says he's Prince's son to get new DNA test

New York - A judge has allowed a new DNA test on a prison inmate who claims he is Prince's son and the rightful heir to the pop legend's vast estate.

Carlin Q Williams, a little-known 39-year-old rapper whose mother says she had sex with Prince in a Kansas City hotel, had requested a second genetic test, a court document showed.

In an order signed last week but made public on Tuesday, a judge in the suburbs of Prince's hometown Minneapolis, Minnesota, asked Williams to undergo the new test by 14 September.

Judge Kevin Eide gave Williams' lawyer until 31 August to choose a place to conduct the test, with the court to select one if not.

The order gives credence to media reports that Williams failed in an earlier test to prove that Prince was his father. The court has not released the findings.

Williams is serving a sentence in a high-security federal prison in Florence, Colorado for gun possession in a stolen car.

Williams, who has been in trouble with the law since his youth, raps under the stage-name Prince Dracula and has a song about killing his purported father.

His mother, Marsha Henson, said in a sworn statement after Prince's 21 April death that she had unprotected sex with the singer in 1976.

Prince, who died at age 57 from an overdose of painkillers, did not leave a will. The Purple Rain icon's estate is estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and includes vaults filled with unreleased material.

Williams, whose prison term runs until the end of 2020, could make a case to inherit Prince's entire fortune if he is confirmed to be his son.

Prince's immediate heirs are his sister Tyka Nelson and five half-siblings. Eide has ordered genetic testing for two people who say they are heirs through Prince's late half-brother Duane Nelson.

The judge last month dismissed 29 claims to Prince's fortune, some of them colourful.

Eide on Tuesday barred further correspondence to the court from one rejected claimant, Claire Elisabeth Nelson, who said she secretly married Prince in Las Vegas in 2002 and that his 1984 hit I Would Die 4 U was about her.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper on Monday reported that Prince may have intended to take a less potent painkiller and died from counterfeit pills.